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Google employees worldwide are walking off the job to protest the company's treatment of women and its handling of sexual assault cases.

Organizers say they expect more than a thousand employees will walk out of Google offices worldwide at 11:10 a.m. in each time zone on Thursday. Hundreds of employees have walked out in Singapore, Zurich, London, Dublin, and New York City, filling nearby streets, sidewalks and parks.

"We've always been told that Google is a leading-edge company, that our culture is something really special. And in that way we totally have the space to walk out and do this today," Claire Stapleton, a New York-based marketing manager for YouTube and one of the walkout's core organizers. "But we also see some very real changes that need to happen."

She said the walkout isn't just about women, but also people of color, contractors, and others at the company who have experienced "feeling diminished or disrespected, have experienced feeling unsafe."

Organizers are calling for an end to forced arbitration, a commitment from the company to end pay and opportunity inequity, a publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report, and a safe and anonymous process for reporting sexual misconduct at Google.

The employee protest comes a week after The New York Times published an extensive report on sexual harassment at the company. Andy Rubin, the creator of the Android software operating system, was accused by a female colleague of coercing her to perform oral sex on him in 2013, the Times reports.

Google reportedly found the allegation credible, asked for his resignation and gave him an exit package worth $90 million.

The company did not mention the allegations in the announcement of his departure.

Rubin has tweeted, "These false allegations are part of a smear campaign."

"As Google workers, we were disgusted by the details of the recent New York Times article, which provided the latest example of a culture of complicity, dismissiveness, and support for perpetrators in the face of sexual harassment, misconduct, and abuse of power," organizers told NPR in an emailed statement.

"For every story in the New York Times, there are thousands more, at every level of the company. Most have not been told."

Since the Times report, the company's leadership is dealing with an agitated workforce, according to multiple reports.

"While Google has championed the language of diversity and inclusion, substantive actions to address systemic racism, increase equity, and stop sexual harassment have been few and far between," organizers say.

Some demands relate directly to Google's workforce gender makeup: Only 31 percent of its global workforce and just over a quarter of its executives are women.

Last year, the federal government sued Google, a government contractor, to release compensation data in order to ensure the company was obeying equal opportunity laws.

Others relate to the company's treatment of sexual harassment. Currently, the company requires employees to waive their right to sue in cases of sexual harassment and often includes confidentiality agreements, the Times reports.